While following the dazzlingly uninformed debate that the Church of England's General Synod conducted about the Episcopal Church and the schismatic Anglican Church in North America in February, I promised myself that I would never be so arrogant as to pretend to expertise on the internal life of a church in which I was not a member. But as the General Synod convenes once again, to discuss issues about which its members can actually be presumed to know something, I find myself walking right up to the precipice of that promise to say a few words about what it will mean if the synod embraces Rowan Williams' poorly conceived ecclesiastical innovations.

If the synod allows the Archbishop of Canterbury to further compromise the authority of a bishop over his or her diocese in order to appease opponents of opening the episcopacy to women, I suspect the Church of England will muddle along as it always has. A church that can ignore the fact that it has gay bishops ordaining gay priests who live with gay partners, while its leaders enforce various sanctions on churches for having gay bishops who ordain gay priests with gay partners, can allow sexists to dictate the terms on which it moves toward gender equity without being undone by cognitive dissonance.

Similarly, if the synod should acquiesce in the House of Bishops' desire to embrace the Anglican Covenant, which would significantly diminish the ability of lay people to influence the Communion and effectively elevate homophobia to near creedal status, I imagine that many in the English Church–and other churches for that matter–will shrug their shoulders and carry on, living their lives the best way that they know how. They might, perhaps, be embarrassed by the bishops' attempt to re-establish an empire administered from a palace in London so long after the folly of such an enterprise was made manifest, but the average church-goer has learned to ignore church politics as a matter of self-preservation.

The consequences of Rowan Williams' campaign to appease his enemies will be felt primarily by Williams himself, and by others charged with speaking on behalf of the Church. They will find that while the faithful at home may find ways to accommodate themselves to legislation they oppose, the wider public will be less willing to take moral instruction from a church that embraces double standards in its treatment of women and makes common cause with African prelates who do not believe that the United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights should pertain to gay people.

It isn't clear that Williams or other Church leaders understand how thoroughly this undermines their credibility nationally and internationally, or how wide a gulf it opens between themselves and the English public. It isn't evident that they grasp the impossibility of speaking truth to power when one has so clearly capitulated to the power one's self.

In the struggle over female bishops and same-sex relationships, Williams and the bishops who are loyal to him have cast their lot not simply with high profile African church leaders, but with the reactionary American culture warriors who finance their activities. This latter group is composed of men whose politics Williams purports to abhor. Yet within the Anglican Communion, the former self-described "hairy lefty" makes common cause with the Institute for Religion and Democracy, an organization founded to oppose the spread of liberation theology and give religious cover to Ronald Reagan's proxy wars in Central America. The scholar who tours the world lecturing on interfaith understanding is an ally in Communion politics with virulent anti-Islamic firebrands affiliated with the North American branch of the Church of Nigeria. The prophet of the sustainable economy cooperates with men who deny that human activity contributes to climate change to deny gays, lesbians and women their full Christian dignity.

One can just barely imagine a case in which an individual sacrifices all other principles for the sake of a single transcendent cause. Rowan Williams is sacrificing his ability to speak on the most urgent issues of our day in order to create a church within a church for people who don't think women should be priests, and a means by which the most regressive leaders in the Anglican Communion can punish their counterparts for repenting of historic sins.